It is, however, a pity so few women are included; it is hard to believe one could not have handled foreign affairs better than Michael Ancram.The streamlining of the front bench has created some quite unwieldy portfolios. Theresa May should be able to manage transport and the environment, although she didn't shine when she last held the job. Dr Fox, Tim Yeo and David Curry may or may not be beautiful, but they have as good a chance as any of convincing voters the Thatcher-Major era has been left behind. Even though they have been on the front bench for some years, the public recognition ratings of David Davis and Liam Fox, for example, are low, so it makes sense for the Tories to focus attention on a relatively small number of people.When New Labour did this, they promoted Harriet Harman and Tony Blair ahead of John Prescott and Michael Meacher.

Mr Davis will have to resist the temptation to outbid Mr Blunkett's authoritarian outbursts.Despite these caveats, the slimming down of the Shadow Cabinet to a dozen has much to be said for it. Mr Davis, an able performer on the screen, is not given to gaffes. He is, however, given to a rather socially conservative outlook. As with Mr Letwin, there is an unfortunate whiff of the second best about his appointment. Had Mr Howard been able to secure Michael Portillo's recall to the front bench in the home affairs brief, that would, at a stoke, have demonstrated the Tories' commitment to a tolerant social agenda, a crucial part of making the party look and sound more like the country it aspires to govern. His policy for sending asylum-seekers to an island far, far away was laughable. Mr Letwin may be clever, but he will need to concentrate hard to get the better of Mr Brown.David Davis's appointment as shadow Home Secretary is equally problematic, but for other reasons.

Mr Letwin was, let us recall, the shadow Treasury spokesman who had to go into hiding during the 2001 general election campaign when he dropped a clanger about Tory plans for public spending. Nor has he been an entirely safe pair of hands since, most recently when he said that he would rather beg than send his children to a state school. Apart from Kenneth Clarke, a former Chancellor, and Mr Howard himself, Mr Hague is the only senior Conservative certain of matching Gordon Brown's authority. Ideally, of course, the post would have gone to William Hague. The promotion of Oliver Letwin to the shadow chancellorship is a risk, despite his success shadowing David Blunkett. Michael Howard demonstrated yesterday that he is not squeamish when it comes to wielding the knife. There are, however, doubts over some of his appointments. It was Margaret Thatcher, during her early leadership, who remarked of reshuffles: "I'm not a good butcher, but I've had to learn to carve the joint.

People expect a new look." Learning to carve the joint is indeed one of the skills expected of political leadership. This bodes well for political life and for democracy in Japan. In effect, Japanese voters seem to have reversed the standard political rule, demonstrating that here, at least, the less things seem to change, the less they actually stay the same.. At best, a forceful opposition favouring faster and further modernisation could push the government towards a more ambitious programme of reforms than the relatively timid ones on which it has already embarked.The sharp rise in support for the DPJ, which now has 177 members in the 480-strong Parliament, also brings Japan closer than it has ever been to two-party politics. The main difference between the two parties was that the DPJ was more radical and made a point of attacking the power of Japan's many vested interests.Whatever else the results show, it is that there is a consensus in favour of more reform.

Like the LPD, the DPJ campaigned on a platform of further economic reform, including cuts in state orders and state subsidies. The New Conservatives were the next biggest losers after the LPD. Their decision to merge, rather than just to ally themselves with the LPD, obviates the need for a coalition, which would inevitably reduce the LPD's capacity to govern and mean less stable government.At the same time, the unexpectedly strong showing of the main opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) - which gained 44 seats - should work in two ways, both of them positive. The results, however, which give Japan more of the same old Liberal Democratic Party (LPD) government, but with a much strengthened opposition, could turn out to be the best possible outcome. The ruling party of Junichiro Koizumi remains in power, but it owes its slender majority to the decision of the New Conservative Party to cut its losses and merge with the LPD.